The Master seized and flung him back.
"If you're so keen on dying," he cried, "you can die right now, for insubordination! Back, away from here, you idiot!"
The major obeyed. The others followed. Already the door was creaking, giving, as the Legionaries—now hardly more than a dozen in number—began the first steps of their retreat, that should rank in history with that of Xenophon's historic Ten Thousand.
The Greeks had all of God's outdoors for their maneuvers. These Legionaries had nothing but dark pits and runways, unexplored, in the bowels of a huge, fanatic city. Thus, their retreat was harder. But with courage unshaken, they turned their backs on the yielding door, and set their faces toward darkness and the unknown.
Two of their number lay dead inside this chamber where the Legionaries now were. Nothing could be done for them; the bodies simply had to be abandoned where they lay. Eight were dead in the passage outside the chamber, their corpses mingled with those of Arabs and Maghrabis.
In the chamber, as the Master glanced back, he could see a heap of bodies round the door. These bodies of attackers who had been pulled inside and butchered, made a glad sight to the Master. He laughed grimly.
"We're more than even with them, so far," he exulted. "We've beaten them, so far! The rest will get us, all right enough, but Jannati Shahr will remember the coming of the white men!"
The survivors—the Master, Bohannan, "Captain Alden," and Leclair and nine others—were in evil case, as they trailed down the low-roofed chamber lighted with copper lamps. More than half bore wounds. Some showed bleeding faces, others limp arms; still others hobbled painfully, leaving bloody trails on the floor of dull gold. Curses on the Arabs echoed in various tongues. This first encounter had taken frightful toll of the Legion.
But every heart that still lived was bold and high. Not one of the little party entertained the slightest hope of surviving or of ever beholding the light of day. Still, not one uttered any word of despair or suggestion of surrender.
Everything but a fight to the finish was forgotten. Only one man even thought of Nissr and of what probably had happened out there on the plain. This man was Leclair.